[Originally posted on 21 April 2011, when this blog was still at weblog.nl, not long before weblog.nl started the move to wordpress. After this the blog was silent for a long time because the move took for-fucking-ever]

So here's some random post about stuff I've been doing lately (with a very broad definition of lately). With pics.

I had my birthday, even before that my brothers had their birthday, and even before that it was halloween, but I already posted pics of that so I'm not going to repeat them. For my birthday people got me a new mouse (left-handed, very nice) and a new vid card that I still have to get installed.

I also scrounged some moneys together and bought a new media-player (formerly known as MP3 players). My oldone was full. I don't know why they don't make them upgradeable, like computers (or an SD-card system like cameras). Or I do know, of course.

So then I took some cloth I still had lying around and made a new cover for it. Turns out that cloth wasn't so suitable and all the edges just tore, so I took some other cloth I still had lying around and tried again. It worked out very well. Used an old pendant for a button (I like using those: they're prettier than actual buttons and I don't have to buy anything new. The cover for my old MP3 player was also made by me in the same way). I keep it closed almost all of the time: I purposefully use cloth that I can feel the buttons of the player through so I can operate it through the cover. I only need to open it if I want to charge it or put new media on it (or take some off it).

Here's a picture:
[picture of my media-player in its cover against the mostly black background of my desk. The cover is made of black cotton cloth, rectangular in shape, about 9 by 5 cm. You can see the lanyard and earphone plug sticking out from the top. The spider-shaped pendant-turned-button is visible just about right in the middle.]

It's Easter soon, and we like to indulge in chocolate. We don't really celebrate these holidays, but we like some of the traditions surrounding them. For Easter we still visit my parents. They buy us a chocolate treat in an interesting shape, and my mom hides eggs which we look for. (Yes, I know I'm going on 30!) This year I decided to try my hand at making my own fancy decorated-and-filled chocolate easter egg. You need quite a bit of chocolate to make one half of a large easter egg and some filled chocolates (bon bons, don't know if they use that term elsewhere in the same way the Dutch do). It was bloody expensive so you're actually better off just buying something really fancy from a bakery (they do chocolate here) if it's only about price, and it takes all day. But it was a lot of fun (and my back hurts like hell).

Pictures:
[picture of a chocolate egg about twice the size of my hand. It's made of milk chocolate with some pink-coloured white chocolate decorations on it]

[picture of some of the chocolates I made. They are round and dome-shaped, made of milk chocolate with little pink swirls made of white chocolate on top. I filled them with a strawberry-yoghurt mix]

[picture of the egg when it was finished. It's mounted by way of some melted chocolate on a pink white chocolate base that I made. I decorated the edge with a dark chocolate ganache that hardens out pretty well. I also decorated where it's stuck onto the base with that ganache]

For my brothers' birthdays I made a huge carrot cake and lugged it over to my parents' house. I also put number-shaped candles on it and of course got it wrong because me and numbers are just like that (The 27 was right but the 22 was not).

A picture:
[picture of a round cake covered completely in white buttercream icing, and further decorated with green buttercream icing, edible silver stars, red edible pearls, and little mushrooms made of sugar. The candles on top are just being lit by my brother, whose hand is in the picture]

For my own birthday, I made a schwarzwalder kirschtorte, scones, cookies, and muffins. Later on I had so many ingredients left that I made another random chocolate cake with buttercream icing (which I put some tangerine flavour into.

Pictures:
[picture of the schwarzwalder kirschtorte, a tall, round cake with whipped cream icing all over, decorated with peaks of whipped cream and chocolate shaped]

[picture of the random chocolate cake, a round cake covered with slightly orange buttercream icing, decorated with some lines of melted chocolate that I dribbled on there]

I'm working on learning how to make my own clothes and operating the sewing machine (my mom is helping). I made some pants so far, and am working on a simple (but huge) wide layered ankle-length skirt, and a shirt. I made the pants from a pattern, am making the shirt from a pattern, and the skirt is a copy (more or less) of one I already own which is pretty much falling apart.